IT'S still too early to say if Liberal Party’s (LP) appointment of Hilario “Junjun” Davide III would turn out great for the party in Cebu province. A few drawbacks are noticeable there.

Davide spent his political career in Cebu City, and while he topped the elections for the City Council in his district, he has not showed an independent streak.

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To be fair to the Noynoy Aquino-Mar Roxas tandem and the LP officials that appointed him the party’s provincial chairman, the choice of Davide seems in keeping with the reformist politics rhetoric. Davide is young and can’t be categorized as a tra-ditional politician just yet. His appointment sends a message that the LP wants change.

This has caught off guard the trapos who were maneuvering early on to be recognized as leaders in Cebu province of the Noynoy-Mar team. Organizers of Partido Panaghiusa, for example, were miffed by LP bypassing them. Davide’s appointment also affected the separate initiative of Lito Osmeña to snag the LP leadership in the province.

But I think this is precisely what the LP intended. A tug-of-war in the Noynoy-Mar bid exists between the reformist politics and realpolitik lines. Choosing Davide represents a win for the reformist politics line, and the question now is if the reaction of trapos in Cebu would force the LP to ease Davide from the picture because of realpolitik.

The other problem is Davide’s subservience to Mayor Tomas Osmeña, which may not pose problems in Cebu City considering that the Bando Osmena-Pundok Kauswagan is for Noynoy-Mar but it makes Junjun’s posture in the province awkward. Osmeña is not popular among people in the province because of his quarrelsome and arrogant ways.

The challenge posed by trapos in the province and Davide’s association with Osmeña, are two of the drawbacks that the new LP provincial head will have to deal with in the coming weeks.

In a way, solving the problems conjured by his appointment should be Davide’s first task before he even considers running against Gov. Gwendolyn Garcia.

Anyway, I don’t think everything is already etched in stone as far as the LP setup in the province is concerned. Noynoy-Mar’s Cebu visit was only the first and the sudden surfacing of many leaders and groups with diverse interests supporting the tandem means much work needs to be done by LP leaders to iron out the kinks that have surfaced.

(khanwens@yahoo.com/ my blog: cebuano.wordpress.com)